Friday, October 13, 2006

"Brown Jenkin" and the Artistry of Arkham Studios

Today's post goes out to Jeffrey Roche of Ubatuber Productions, who asked for a better pic of the Brownie Award I collected in Portland last weekend. Ask, and ye shall receive!

The Brownie is based on the character "Brown Jenkin" from the short story, "Dreams in the Witch House" by H.P.Lovecraft, and was sculpted by Bryan Moore of Arkham Studios. Bryan's work is so uncannily realistic that you can get lost in the faces of his characters...like a 3-D equivalent of comics artist Alex Ross. In his catalog of works you will find (in addition to Brown Jenkin) representations of H.P.Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Anton LaVey, and a very art-deco version of the Great Cthulhu itself.

Bryan began his career as a sculptor working on such projects as the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and television's Tales of the Dark Side, meaning that his artwork was influencing me long before I had a piece of his work sitting in my Stop-Motion Shrine of Coolness (and getting along famously with the creature cast of FROM BEYOND, I must say). Check out Arkham Studios to see some really inspiring character sculpts (complete with rotating 360-degree views) that'll make you want to stay up way too late working on your sculpting techniques!

Its actually not one of my favorites, though its great as any Lovecraft tale, but I do love the character of Brown Jenkins, tiny evil rat-man....now that I think about it, you'll probably love it Mike, the main character sort of wanders in and out of his 'nightmares', very surreal...and hey, funny enough, I'm reading The Witches by Roald Dahl right now and he's got a character named Bruno Jenkins who gets turned into a mouse...time to go look for Lovecraftian references in Chocolate Factory :P

In this world of mutual admiration, I urge all fans of Lovecraft's work to seek out Michael's superlative version of From Beyond. It's sheer faithfulness to the original work, in addition to Granberry's own masterful take on the tale, make it sure to be a fan favorite, and one likely to elicit a favorable response from the Old Gent himself!

I am honored to be in Michael's good company and look forward to many cool projects from the mind of this talented fellow.

"Dreams..." is definitely worth a read if you're looking for some great, get-under-your-skin Lovecraft, Mike, and the Brown Jenkin character is one of my favorite HPL creations. Not some massive, physically imposing presence, he's all the creepier for being small and unobtrusive...

Holy crap, Jeff, I never would have suspected the Lovecraft influence in Roald Dahl, but I'm sure you're right! That's way too much of a coincidence not to have been intended. I'm going to have to go back and read "The Witches" now!

And Bryan, your praise is downright humbling, especially that "faithfulness to the original work" part. Making "From Beyond" taught me so much about adapting existing material (something I hadn't tried before), namely that it's absolutely nerve-wracking to mess with someone else's work! What a nightmare to think you might screw up one of your personal favorite stories by trying to adapt it to film! Thanks for supporting the Red Hatchet vision, and especially this version of "From Beyond"...(*resists urge to crank out a sequel*) :)